You need to map requests that you want the DispatcherServlet to handle, by using a URL mapping in the web.xml file. The following is an example to show declaration and mapping

for HelloWebDispatcherServlet example:

<web-app id="WebApp_ID" version="2.4"

    xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"

    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee

    http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">

    <display-name>Spring MVC Application</display-name>

   <servlet>

      <servlet-name>HelloWeb</servlet-name>

      <servlet-class>

         org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet

      </servlet-class>

      <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>

   </servlet>

   <servlet-mapping>

      <servlet-name>HelloWeb</servlet-name>

      <url-pattern>*.jsp</url-pattern>

   </servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

The web.xml file will be kept WebContent/WEB-INF directory of your web application. OK, upon initialization of HelloWeb DispatcherServlet, the framework will try to load the application context from a file named [servlet-name]-servlet.xml located in the application's WebContent/WEB- INF directory. In this case our file will be HelloWeb-servlet.xml.